iTunes Exclusive Episode Stonehearst Asylum

The following is a sooner orgator production.
The following is a sooner orgator production.
The following is a sooner orgator production.
The following is a sooner orgator production.
The following is a sooner orgator production.
The following is a sooner orgator production.
Welcome Empire member and members.
If you are hearing my voice, it means one of a couple of things.
First and foremost, we hope it means you've listened to the Clubhouse podcast at least once.
If not, welcome.
It also may mean that you subscribe to this show on iTunes because it is time for another iTunes exclusive.
Welcome.
This is iTunes exclusive number 56.
I do believe.
My name is Rob.
I am the executive producer and ringmaster of this particular circus.
But I am not alone for this particular episode.
I am joined live in studio by a couple of gentlemen.
First of all, to my right is a man who apparently all the ladies know.
And we only reason we know that is because he waves it all of them.
He is the king of bowling.
He is Andrew Beckham.
Welcome, sir.
Especially ones that wear a dark dress is in the light color heels.
But you don't discriminate.
No.
Didn't need for that.
Also joining us for this particular episode is a man who last night learned a difference between
his short story and a book.
He is the official fact checker of this show.
You may know him as fun, don't go, but his mom and even don't want to call him
Don for the book and be the show sir.
I learned that a bunch of short stories can make a book.
That is true.
Hey, Robert forget to start my nephew's birthday.
One of my two adopted kids because I have no kids.
I know about it.
On the day we record this for the day it comes out.
Today, this is when we record this.
I know it's coming out tomorrow.
But landing happy birthday of their Montana.
He is one of them for graduation earlier this year.
Oh, okay.
Happy birthday landing.
Even though you will be hearing this and it won't be your birthday when you hear this.
Just know that you are thought of on your birthday.
And we can prove that.
Normally when we do an eye to the next close air.
It's usually to review something.
And this particular episode is no exception to that rule.
We are here to review a movie by director Brad Anderson
an adaptation of a Edgar Allan post short story.
The name of the short story is actually,
I had to just lost my place there.
It's called the system of Dr. Tar and Professor Feather.
You see what they did there?
Yeah.
Tar and Feather.
But this particular interpretation of that story is called Stonehurst Assylum.
Adapted from the short story by Edgar Allan Poe by Joe Gangemi.
I hope I got that Gangemi.
I hope I got that even close.
Kate Beckham sale.
Michael Kane, Brendan Gleason, Jim Sturgis, Ben Tingsley.
I mean, what else do you need to say?
There's a lot of people, but those are the major ones.
That's one of the, at least one, a Academy Award winner in there, sir.
And once a night, sir Ben Tingsley.
Yeah, it's true.
But so he's also the Oscar Award winner too.
Yeah.
Basically the story is this.
Jim Sturgis who you might know,
I know from across the universe,
plays Dr. Edward Newgate, an Oxford graduate
who shows up at Stonehurst Assylum,
which this takes place in the turn of the 19th to 20th century.
And he shows up with Stonehurst Assylum,
which is in the country in England,
kind of a backwards kind of a place
to do his clinical research.
As he becomes a, what they call an alienist,
which is a doctor in a, in the same asylum.
And so he gets there and he meets up
with, I lost my place there.
Dr. Silas Lamb played by the great Ben Tingsley,
who kind of takes them under his wing,
shows him the ropes.
And what Dr. Newgate realizes as time goes on,
is there are some very nefarious goings on
at the asylum.
Kate Beckinsale plays the, plays Eliza Graves,
the wife of a man who,
she seems to have a problem with people touching her.
And he puts her in the asylum of thinking that it will cure her.
And that's as far as I'm willing to go in this story.
Because if you don't know, I ain't telling you.
Now, I do think that the one sheet of this kind of give some things away,
but if you haven't seen the one sheet and do not want spoilers,
I'm not going to give them to you.
Because we do pride ourselves on this particular show
to be spoiler free.
Now, I know that if you go see Don's review on the clubhouse podcast.com,
which is our website,
he does put some minor spoilers in his.
I did not.
I understand.
And I, the one I put on here was,
I think from the trailer, just to let you know.
And then, and Don's process there,
as he watches the trailer.
And if it gives it away in the trailer,
he'll let you know.
But he also says, right?
The top of his review,
there are some minor spoilers here.
Mind-stayed spoiler free.
So, Gidee kind of a choice.
If you want to read what somebody thought of it
without spoilers versus with some minor spoilers.
I think I think I can go too far,
I just, you know,
because Merka.
Merka.
That's our written reviews on the clubhouse podcast.com.
Don and Andrew were both in attendance last night for the screening.
Don will start with you.
How about the look of the film?
How did you feel about it?
Before again, we got to do,
take a Carol Gailer from Gailer Smith.
Oh, yeah.
And in the USA film festival,
we're allowing us to be as well.
The look of the film,
there's a minor character,
which I put in my written review,
the asylum.
Well, you put the asylum as an actual character,
okay?
Yeah.
And at the back of my review,
the look was incredible.
I'm kind of one of those guys who's a sucker for
the late 1800s, 1900s.
Look, it looked pretty historical,
accurately in that film.
Historically accurate.
Sorry.
No, you're good.
You're good, ma'am.
But that scene when you first come to that asylum,
he's outside and you see the gate
and then the fog clear.
So you can't see anything beyond the gate.
Yeah, but then after a while,
it starts to clear.
Then you see the whole thing.
It's just like,
that look wasn't incredible.
I had me there.
The look had me there.
And then you go inside it.
They wore the historically correct dress.
All the props look pretty historically correct,
which I got to give Kudos to on that.
Oh, great costume design.
Yeah, great costume design.
Oh, great costume design.
Oh.
Beyond that,
the scenery on the outside scenes,
I thought was incredible.
On one certain scene,
which we,
it's in the trailer,
but then I'm going to say anything to be spoiler-free.
And Kudos is now by Thomas Ola.
Let's go.
We gotta get it.
Let's up on that and the props and everything's
certainly, I did like look at the film.
I love the scenery.
That's that's basically my,
in a nutshell for you there.
Okay, Andrew.
I enjoyed the scenery too.
I love anything that is an old Victorian style
or castle.
Anything is like that.
Just get me as well.
get me as well, um, I never thought about the asylum is actually being a character that's
kind of opening my eyes to something there. It's an interesting look at it for sure.
Look, um, minor character, but minor character. Yeah, yeah, minor character, so a character. You're good.
Yeah. I really enjoyed the look of the film. I thought that that it was very authentic. I think
that Anderson's use of lighting, where he really darkened up his sets without being hard to look at.
I thought was very, very good. He really captured the time well. I agree with that on the costume design.
You know, hey, back in sale, how are you doing? Um, just her costumes alone. You know,
she is a woman of privilege yet she's in this place, but she's always dressed to the nines.
Some of the characters in the film, where what they're wearing suits what's going on with them,
I thought was very, very good. As far as the direction of the film, I think Anderson did well with
what he had. He understood that this was a short film, and he turned into a movie that's almost
an hour and 50 minutes long. It takes a while. I mean, Andrew, you read the short story yesterday.
It probably took you less time to read it than it did to watch the film. It did, and it was really
hard to read just because it was kind of in that old English style, so there was just a bunch of
use in yours and all that going back and forth, but he stayed really true to it, and I was actually
present pleasantly surprised with that. So it started in the right place and ended in the right place.
And yeah, I kind of skipped the middle part just because it was just so long and I actually had
some work to do, so I chose to do that, you know, that, but yeah, the ending was a little bit different.
It was, it was one of those instances where if Anderson wasn't real careful, it would get away from him,
yes. But it never did. He really kept his vision and kept the story on, you know, in line with
each other done, the direction of the film. Well, I thought the storyline was great,
but there was a part, which we talked about after the fact. Right, right, right.
It dragged for about 20 minutes. I did, I didn't think it would, it could have been about 20 minutes
short. Yeah, but, but, but on that fact, I thought the storyline was good. I liked the twist. I
liked the turns. I liked the ending. I'm not saying anything else except I liked the ending.
Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit smaller free. I thought he did a good job with this,
the whole direction, everything from top to bottom, because to have everything historically correct,
the storyline kept me intrigued. Except for that little part, that's my only, my only
right, because it seemed to like a little bit at that one point, which we talked about. Well, again,
that's the challenge of taking a short story and turning into a feature film. I did one of my
issues with the way the pacing happened. I really felt that, and I said this in my written review as
well, the reveal of what the reason you're really watching this film comes way too early.
I think that they should have done that reveal maybe 10 or 20 minutes later, and maybe then maybe
I wouldn't have won it 10 or 20 minutes out of it, maybe lay some more groundwork
of him meeting more of the characters within the hospital, and what leads him to the big reveal,
maybe do that more than once, and so he's not sure where what that is or where it's coming from,
and then you can lead up to that. I think if I've got to have a criticism of it,
I just think that that reveal of what the movies really about came way too soon,
because it was within the first 30 minutes. There were too many characters introduced,
which then caused the later parts to lag. Okay, I can see that. Mainly because they would
get to a big point where they want to leave off to keep your interest, and then they were shoot to
another scene or another character. I agree with the other. I really do. I think if you
had that reveal, which really you could call the end of act one, if you'd have done that a little
bit later, maybe it wouldn't felt like it lagged like it did, because you would have had more
build up to it. Now, there's still, you know, being Eddie Rowland Pell, there's still a great
couple of great twists and turns, and as a guy that's usually pretty good at sniffing this stuff out,
I had two or three or four different scenarios running in my head. Now, I will say one of them
was right, but to have multiple scenarios running through my mind and not know which way it's going
to go, that's a good thing. It's not hard to find it. It wasn't what I thought it was, but it could
have been, but then the big ending through before a loop, which I did not see coming, which I love
in movies, so that happens. It finally dawned on me. Like, I finally went back to the beginning
of the movie and thought, okay, I think I'm putting some things together that I may have missed at
the very beginning. The performances, Kate Beckinsale, you know what you're getting with her?
I mean, she's, she's a good actress. I wouldn't say she's great, but she's good.
My thing was, I didn't find any great performances in this film, but by the same token, I thought
everybody was serviceable. The problem that you face right now with Ben Kingsley,
sort of Ben Kingsley, although one of my favorite actors of all time, the guy's amazing.
He can choose scenery real easy, where everything around him disappears. And he, in this film,
he kind of walks that line, but he never crosses it. You know, he gives a Ben Kingsley performance,
making no mistake. There's a Ben Kingsley performance. But he's, he's not totally over the top.
There's, it's not Hugo, it's not Chandler's list, but it's still he did great. Right. And, you know,
not no pun intended, but you can see a method behind the madness. You know what I mean?
And that's what I liked about his performance in it. Surges my thing with him,
it took me a little while to not see his character in across the universe.
Yeah. Once I could get past that, I just, I don't, he's a good actor. He really truly is. I just
don't know that this, maybe the casting here was dead on. He was good. He was serviceable, but he
wasn't great. Done. I thought her in Kate had, I mean, him and Kate had a great chemistry on that
film. Now, I didn't think of him as Mr. Across the Galaxy, believe it or not. Across the universe.
Across the universe, I'm sorry. I think of Guardian of the Galaxy, I apologize.
But I thought they had great chemistry as kind of the two two of the three leak characters
in this film. I thought they flowed well. They acted well together.
King Kingsley, of course, you know you didn't get greatness. They didn't disappoint at all.
Absolutely. And one thing up on my mind in my review is Sophie Kennedy Clark played one of the
played Millie. I can't give a shot to her. I thought she did. You know what's the
major role. She did get for what she had. She's new. I think she's an up and camera. We'll be
standing one of the only thing you really know her from. She was in dark shadows as hippie chick
won. She was also in a large bunch of careers in Infamaniac, volume one and two, and I haven't seen
those. But she's got some more stuff coming out as time goes on, especially this year.
But I will agree. She was amazing in her role. And again, we don't want to go too deep into it
because we don't want to give away too much. Exactly. But she has seen as one of the nurses in the
hospital and her performance is borderline eerie. But it's in a good way. Oh yeah, keep an eye on
for Sophie Kennedy Clark. I will definitely agree with you that Andrew. One thing about
Sergio's in the second cell. They're chemistry on the scene I agree with you. They had great
chemistry. And I noticed that whenever I guess served in Kingsley's character, we come in
and there would be like three people in the room that they were in. He was never really in the
foreground. He was always a little bit in the background because like you said, he does kind of
he draws your attention away from everything. Because he's been Kingsley. Yeah, and that's just
all the rest. And the only time they were like Kingsley. The only time they really focused in on him
is whenever they were trying to show the real emotion behind of who he actually is in the movie.
I know I said this earlier. But that film cannot be that film without the asylum. The look,
it was always there. The look, the inside, the how it changed from level to level. And not only that,
but what I liked about the way they did the asylum is you didn't see the whole thing up front.
So longer the film went on, the more of it you saw. And so you could kind of, oh, what's this? Oh,
this is a new room. Oh, this can't be good. You know, there's just that whole, you know,
again, outside of the reveal, I thought everything else was very good. Like I said, if I've
got to have a criticism of the movie, that's it. Yeah. Or in the short story, the asylum is really
what you hear about, it's what they speak to the most in the short story for like, you know,
the first six paragraphs of it. Oh, really. Yeah. You know, it's just two guys that are like
traveling. And then, oh, I've heard about this asylum. I want to go see it. And, you know,
it's something, since I'm here, I'd like to go see it. You know, I may never get a chance to come here again
and go see it. And, and that's how it was. And then afterwards, it kind of fell into the characters.
They went away to the asylum. Any further comments that you've always wanted to make before we
get to the final analysis? There is some brutality, some brutal scenes just to let the
empire know. There's a little bit of violence. Yes. In some scenes that may be upsetting
to some viewers, I recommend this my high score above. It is PG-13 just to let you know. Yeah, no.
You gotta give it up. You know, I kind of heads up morning. Absolutely. Absolutely.
And you're in the other comments you want to make before we get to the final analysis.
Yeah. All right. We now get to the final analysis when we do these. And what that means is,
you know, we're not going to give you thumbs up thumbs down. We're not going to give you a letter,
great. We're not going to give you a one to ten thing because you're our audience and you're better than that.
It's a two-pron question when we review movies. Question number one is, would you see this film again?
If the answer is no, then we're done here. But if the answer is yes, then the question becomes,
how would you see it again? Would you pay to see it in first run? Would you go in a twilight show?
Afternoon morning show. Second run. Would you wait for it on Blu-ray or DVD? Would you wait for it on
cable? Would you wait for it on something like USA? Don't let's start with you. Would you see this film again?
Yes, I would. You would. All right. How would you see this film again?
Me personally. I would see it again. Probably on
Honestly, DVD or HBO. Okay. But I put in my review. I recommend it as a twilight or
matinee at the theater where people have not seen it. Andrew? I would definitely see this again.
And I would recommend a matinee. Okay. So you would see it at the adjur boy. That would.
I would like, I guess my cousin and my friends, we could really get in and this and just talk about it for hours.
Okay. Fair enough. I would see this film again. I think this is for me it'd be more
suited like Don says maybe Blu-ray or cable. Again, it's a good movie. It's not a great movie.
And I'm not a fan normally of the horror genre, but this is not a horror film.
It's build as a thriller and I think that more suits it. Where I said in my written review
where a thriller relies on the story to drive your attention. Whereas a horror film really
relies on the visual to drive it. I thought that this was a good thriller. It's October.
These kind of movies have come out this time of year. And it's good to see a movie like this
get released in a world of the conjuring and paranormal activity 74. And you know, just we talked about
in our normal weekly show, which we did live from the Angelica Film Center. Wrong turn six. Really?
The first one wasn't that interesting. Well, it's like I said at some point, doesn't it become a right turn?
I'm just saying one through five just to back because there are so many unanswered questions from wrong turn five.
I just and it's called Last Resort, which I doubt. But it's good to see a movie like this come out
that's just not out to just make you pee on yourself. Or this is again, but that's Edgar Allan Poe,
where it's more about what you see in your head and what the story drives. So this would be good,
you know, maybe you want to have a little movie fest with your friends around this time of
years, the colors, and the seasons are changing. And this is a good break from the from the horror genre.
So yeah, check it out. If you're afraid of haunted houses, go do this instead.
Watch this. You know what? I am. I don't do haunted house. Really? Yeah. No, no, no, no. I riff. I said this
in my review, too. I refused to pay people to try to make me pee on myself. I don't want to pee on myself at all.
But I definitely am not going to pay somebody to do it. That's a valid point. I see that. I see that.
I don't I don't deal with that well. Yeah. I just don't. And also like a caution, if you do watch this at home
or on DVD or something, make sure you're not distracted by anything because they focus because otherwise you will
miss things and you won't get what the movie you want. It's not the movie. It's less than two hours.
You know, there's movies a lot longer than that out there right now. Okay. All right, gentlemen. All right.
Let us go ahead and do the plugs. Shall we?
Visit our website. www.theclubhousepodcast.com. Find out everything you need to know and some stuff you don't.
Like our page on Facebook, look up the clubhouse podcast with the word podcast on the end or something
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I'm at yes that Rob Urban that is built ERV. I am my normal co-host. It's Chad Warmic.
You can follow him on Twitter at Chad and PG69. You can find me at King of Boeing. That would be Andrew Beckham.
And I'm the fondongo and you can email me at Don at theclubhousepodcast.com. Email Don if you like us to do
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comments, concerns, or tell me to go out and say, and I am Rob at theclubhousepodcast.com.
Chad is Chad of theclubhousepodcast.com. And Andrew is at go and pound-sandagemiel.com.
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And real quick, our usual time is six o'clock central U.S. status. That was my next
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So until next time we talk for Andrew, for Don, I'm Rob and for the Empire, the clubhouse is closed.
Hi, Brittany Palmer.